I spent my whole life only recognizing my lucky breaks after they were gone.
Say you’re the head of the Sinaloa Cartel. Now the cartels count their money by weighing it in eighteen wheelers. But one sunny Mexican day, your in-house money scrubber comes to you and says you’re 30 million light. Who can you trust to do the forensic accounting to track your stolen cash? Deloitte & Touche? H & R Block?
“Lou Carroll”. For what it’s worth, it’s an alias. The Hong Kong photo goes back about five years. In that one, he’s “Carl Gauss”. Tokyo, Tel Aviv, Naples. There was a sighting in Tehran. All describing the same man. “An accountant”, “Our accountant”, “The accountant”.
Marybeth Ascension Medina. Graduated University of Baltimore cum laude with a degree in criminal justice. Two years Baltimore PD as an analyst, two more at Homeland, analyst again, and the last five years here at Treasury. Analyst. You did the heavy lifting on Agent Lorenz’s case last month.
Men kill each other for any number of reasons. Money, power… fear. Nine men would die that day at the Ravenite, but for none of those reasons. No, they’d taken something from the man who was killing them. Something that couldn’t be made whole again. Something very important to him. And he was there for his pound of flesh. Little Tony Bazzano. I’d been wedged in a van for six months listening to that arrogant little prick belch, fart, and brag. I didn’t recognize his voice with all the fear in it. Our man had come for revenge. And he got it. Nine dead. Imagine you’re a Treasury agent approaching the twilight of a spectacularly dismal career. And then one day, that break you should have been looking for. Francis Silverberg, a black money legend. Cleaned cash from Monte Carlo to Havana to Vegas. He cooked the books for the Gambino family for 40+ years. Until one day, the boss, Big Tony Bazzano, thought maybe the old man’s age made him vulnerable to prosecution. Ordered his son, Little Tony, to kill Francis. Kid fucked it up. Francis ran, became a federal informant in return for protective custody. Could have turned my career around if only I’d listened. I didn’t. He was processed out, and he lost the only protection he had. The protection that he was promised when he testified against Big Tony. And this time, Little Tony got it right. He had Francis in a couple hours. Down in a filthy basement in the Bronx, nailed to a chair, tortured to death. So I, uh, volunteered for a joint task force. Sat outside the Ravenite in a surveillance van for months hoping to get a shred of evidence to use against Francis’ killers. I went in there hoping I could ease my guilt. And I met our accountant. Why he let me live, I didn’t know. But he changed my life. Gave my notice at the Department. I started looking forward to the day again. You know, feeling the sun on my face. Quit drinking. Was on my way out the door… and then the phone rang.
She tells me she works for the accountant. And that a shipping container packed with Chinese nationals is passing through the Port of New York. Few months later, one ton of uncut Juarez cartel product is entering Miami.
Army lent him to us to track al-Qaeda money launderers. He was transferred from Leavenworth to our detention facility in D.C. Did the work of five men. Data mining, cluster analysis. He roomed with Francis. They kept to themselves, played chess, ate together, sat in the TV room together. They were inseparable. And then one day, a guard told Wolff why Francis hadn’t called or written since he got out. That his burnt body had been found in a Staten Island landfill. Wolff snapped, went after the guard. He fractured the man’s skull with a thermos. Escaped from a third-floor window. Took the thermos.
Spring of 2003, at a funeral home in Kankakee, Illinois. Our boy sends six locals to the hospital with a variety of injuries. No one knew Wolff. The older man who came with him was identified as a colonel, U.S. Army.
Mrs. Lauren Alton. Mrs. Alton taught first grade for 13 years in Kankakee. Survived by a husband and two boys, ages 12 and 10. By all accounts, an ordinary life, well lived. But cut short. And then a fight breaks out. A brawl, really. Over what, the authorities never pinned down. Deputies respond. A Barney Fife-type squares off with our boy, gets rattled, pulls his gun. The colonel just stepped in front of 831. Army collects both men. Police report names Wolff as “Solider One.” And widower identified the colonel by name. His late wife’s former husband. I checked; it’s an alias. No more real than “Christian Wolff”.
